The attitudes here about photos seem to be particular to the English speaking world.

There is a long tradition of nude artistic modeling throughout Europe, and if you go to a museum of Renaissance arts like the Barghello in Florence, you will see countless nude statues, and paintings of nude people, including children of all ages. Statues of boys as Pan, the young king David, and so on are in there by the dozens. Each such production involved long study of one or more actual live models. This tradition carries on today, as seen with the famous Boy with Frog statue by Charles Ray on the Punta Dogana in Venice ( [link to fr.wikipedia.org] where Ray's 12-year-old neighbor served as a model.

Needless to say, when photography developed, this form of nude model artistry continued, often suggesting innocence, though the advent of naughty French postcards and other early pornography (involving adults) soon followed along.

I'm a little surprised that no one here would keep Barrie or Lewis Carroll out of prison. Ironically, while I was typing this post, an ad appeared for a production of Peter Pan inside this forum (godlikeproductions) - our host website is making money from Barrie's work at this very moment.

Well, I'm not here to argue, just to observe. This clarification will be my last word. Except to say that it should be obvious that if photos didn't lead Carroll or Barrie to hands-on abuse, the idea that this progression is inevitable cannot be right. In any case, we don't really know their sexual orientation - we just know that they would have been imprisoned and blown up in the press as presumed pedophiles today.